the invention of maya cartography in early colonial yucatán.pdf
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Circles of Creation: The Invention of Maya Cartography in Early Colonial YucatnAuthor(s): Amara L. SolariSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 92, No. 3 (September 2010), pp. 154-168Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29546119 .Accessed: 08/09/2014 13:16
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Circles of Creation: The Invention of Maya Cartographyin Early Colonial Yucatan
Amara L. Solan
In March 1842, after six months spent surveying the ancient
Maya ruins of Guatemala and southern Mexico, American
lawyer and amateur explorer John Lloyd Stephens (18051852) and his expedition team emerged from the overgrownforest of central Yucatan and entered the small colonial town
of Mani.1 Prompted by accounts of "ancient relics" still in
the possession of Mani's Maya residents, Stephens hoped the
town would lend insight into the region's pre-Columbian
past, given its establishment on the ruins of a Maya city inthe early years of European occupation.2 Before the conquest,the Xiu lineage had dominated the politically prominent city,
which, because of its early alliance with the Spaniards in the1540s, was selected as headquarters for the Franciscan order's
sixteenth-century evangelical campaign. However, the interven?
ing centuries had largely ignored the town and its grand mo?nastic complex, which by themid-nineteenth century had fadedinto the sleepy little town visited by Stephens and his cohort
(Fig. 1).Stephens began the following day by questioning Maya
community leaders about the existence of the purported"relics." Surprisingly, they cooperated, presenting Stephens
with a cotton cloth painting depicting a European-style coatof arms surrounded by the illustrated heads of local Maniinhabitants murdered in 1537 by a neighboring lineage, the
Cocoms of Sotuta (Fig. 2).3 The Mani residents' possession of
this historical artifact caused Stephens to mistakenly differ?
entiate this population from the other Maya communities he
had visited in the past year, attributing to the people ofMania supposed atypical interest in regional history:
. . . day after day we rode into places unknown beyond the
boundaries of Yucatan, with no history attached to them....
Mani, however, rises above the rest, and, compared with the
profound obscurity or the dim twilight in which other places are
enveloped, its history is plainly written. . . . [Mani] was the first
and only instance in which we met with any memorial in the
hands of the Indians, tending to keep alive the memory of anyevent in their history.4
Once handed physical evidence of the native population'shistorical interest, Stephens asked after the existence of ad?
ditional "memorials."5 The alcalde mayor (chief judicial offi?cial) willingly granted Stephens access to the municipal pa?pers housed in the town's casa real, or town hall, where he
brought to light a manuscript now recognized as the earliest
surviving example of Yucatec Mayan written in Latin script, atextual account of the 1557 Mani Land Treaty and its associ?
ated map (Fig. 3).Stephens discovered, housed between the torn and faded
leather covers, the Mani Land Treaty Map, included as theearliest document of the "Xiu Chronicles," a collection of
documents dating between 1557 and 1813 that record the
history of the Xiu family.6 The manuscript, composed in
Yucatec Mayan, was largely illegible to the North American.Nonetheless, Stephens recognized specific place-names in
the text, such as the impressive pre-Columbian city of Ux
mal, which the expedition team had visited earlier and whichthe expedition's resident draftsman, Frederick Catherwood
(1799-1854), had recorded (Fig. 4). Convinced of the doc?ument's importance, Stephens set about the task of transcrib?
ing the map, glossing it as "Indian Map" (Fig. 5).7 Simplyrendered in black ink, the 1557 map features a circular
composition, defined by a ring of two superimposed circleswhose exterior is punctuated with pictographlike cross for?
mations and annotated place-names. Inside the round form,
theprovince
of Mani and itsdependent
towns aredepicted,laid out in a schematic map. Each settlement is signified by a
unique church toponym and linked to neighboring commu?nities by thin black lines, representing footpaths.
While Stephens considered this cartograph, with its seem?
ingly idiosyncratic circular format, "curious," at this historical
moment he could not have recognized that all territorial
representations created by Maya artists-scribes during the
earliest decades of the colonial period relied on a nearlyidentical composition.8 That is, the format of The Mani Land
TreatyMap is the normative mode of indigenous spatial rep?resentations produced in the second half of the sixteenth
century. This corpus includes maps of native authorship pro?duced for administrative purposes, such as The Mani Land
Treaty Map, and also cartographs drawn beyond the watchful
eyes of the Franciscan friars for specifically indigenous uses,such as those found in native manuscripts (Fig. 6). The sheer
ubiquity of this compositional form, utilized throughout the
northern Yucatan, and also later in the regions of Tabasco
and Oaxaca (Fig. 7), suggests that this visualization of terri?
tory was directly derived from indigenous spatial imaginingsin existence long before the colonial "invention" of native
cartography.9 That is, the round maps invented in the earlycolonial period cannot be attributed to recent Europeaninfluence or a pre-Columbian cartographic practice, as one
has yet to come to light. Rather, this compositional form is acolonial invention, derived from pre-Columbian spatial con?
ceptions, which understood space, and particularly one's
home territory, in circular terms.
Ironically, while Stephens was surprised by the Mani resi?
dents' ability to "cling with desperate and fatal tenacity to thememory of those ancestors whom they did not know," he was
unaware that the "curious" composition of the Mani map and
all other Maya maps can be directly tied to their function of
visualizing local history, specifically, localized tales of cosmo
genesis. Like indigenous maps produced elsewhere in Mesoamerica and beyond, the maps drawn and painted in the
Maya area illustrate a uniquely native conception of space,and the circular maps portray a "communicentric" view of
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1 The monastic complex of Mani,
completed mid-16th century(photograph by Erik J. Petersen)
MAYA CARTOGRAPHY IN FARLY COLONIAL YUCATAN I55
localized territory, since they image the role of individualcommunities in moments of the world's creation.10
The form and composition used in these early indigenouscartographs visually reflect a narrative device found in an
account of the ninth-century conquest of the peninsula bythe Itza. The tale is recorded in "The Book of the Chilam
Balam of Chumayel," a colonial-period manuscript written in
Yucatec Mayan, but its contents surely originated in preColumbian
codices, makingit a rare, albeit
hybridized,source of insight into indigenous ideologies.11 While thisaccount, which I refer to as the Itza Invasion Episode, was
presented as a historical tale, a closer linguistic and narrative
analysis reveals that it was self-consciously recast as a primor?dial story of creation, fusing cosmogenic narratives and ter?
ritorial description. This creation story served as a model for
indigenous circular cartography, allowing Maya mapmakersto conceptualize a link between time and space (or, more
concretely, history and community territory) and thus ironi?
cally represent the interest in "history" that Stephens denied
for all Maya peoples save the residents of Mani.
Maya k'atun Wheels as Calendrical CartographyUnlike Western modern temporal reckonings, which typically
relyon
linearityas an
organizingstructure, ancient Me
soamericans conceived of time as both cyclical and linear,
evidenced by their multiple and varied calendrical systems,many of which operated simultaneously and congruently.12
During the course of the pre-Columbian era, some of these
many calendars fell out of use, and by the late post-Classicperiod (1250-1519 CE), the years just preceding the SpanishConquest, Yucatec peoples relied primarily on the k'atun
cycle (or alternatively, the "Short Count" or "period-ending
dating"), an abbreviation of Classic period (250-850 CE)calendars composed of thirteen cycles of approximately 20
years (19.71 years) to total 256.25 years.13 Each of the thir?teen k'atun was referred to by the date the cycle completed,
typically rendered with an ahau glyph partnered with the
cycle's numerical coefficient (13Ahau, 8 Ahau, 2Ahau, andso on).14 In the colonial manuscripts, this calendar was com?
monly imaged as a circle, or radial wheel, ringed by the daynames of the thirteen named katun cycles (Figs. 8, 9).15
The compositional similarity between katun wheels andthe round
mapsof the colonial
periodhas
longbeen
recog?nized.1() These renderings of the k'atun appear in manu?
scripts of both Spanish and indigenous authorship, testifyingto their prominence in Yucatec knowledge production. In
fact, Diego de Landa (1524-1579), the second bishop ofYucatan, included one in his Relation de las cosas de Yucatan, a
manuscript compiled in the 1560s detailing Maya lifeways,making it the earliest known graphic representation of a
k atun wheel (Fig. 8).17 Landa's image, presumably derived
from k'atun wheels of native authorship that he had viewed, is
composed of three concentric circles, divided into thirteen
compartments, each housing the ahau glyph and associated
numerical notation to refer to a specific k'atun cycle. Landa
marked the top of the circle with a crosslike formation,
orienting the image toward the east and demonstrating in
visual form theconceptual
link betweenspace
and time for
the early colonial Maya people.This intersection of time and directionality is even more
apparent in other images of the k'atun cycle, in particular,those completed in manuscripts written for and by indige?nous scribes, such as "The Book of the Chilam Balam ofKaua," of about 1824 (Fig. 9).18 In this example, the wheel is
composed of four concentric circles, the small centermost
form labeled "Mundo," earth. Each k'atun cycle is again ref?
erenced by a glyphic component, here a highly Europeanizedhead with the associated numerical notations rendered in
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156 ARI BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2010 VOLUME XCIINUMBER 3
2 The memorial to the massacre at Otzmal (drawing byMatthew Restall after the 17th-century drawing in Diego Lopezde Cogolludo, Les Ires sighs de In domination espanola en Yucatan
[Merida, Mex.: Manuel Aldana Rivas, 1867-68], vol. 3, plate VI)
Arabic numerals. Above each ahau glyph, the artist has included
additional names from the tzolk'in alendar (260 days). TheKaua artist, as in Landa's example, utilized a cross to designatethe east, but here, given the textual inclusion of lakin, the Mayan
word for east, the indigenous significance of this direction ismore concrete. Correspondingly, the left side of the circle isglossed with xaman, north, the bottom with chikin, west, and
finally the right with nohol, south. The intercardinal directionswere also marked by two intersecting lines terminating in brack?
etlike flourishes on the exterior of the outer circle.
With the explicit inclusion of directional indicators withinthe composition of k'atun calendar wheels, a conceptual link
is constructed between the seemingly irreconcilable dimen?
sions of space and time. Contrary toWestern modern spatial
conceptions,where a circle evokes
imagesof the
sphericalearth, for the colonial Maya, the circle references the world's
terrestrial plane, whose outer edges are defined with specificdirectionalities. This association is apparent in a ceremonial
artifact, excavated from the early post-Classic city of Mayap?n,located in northwest Yucatan. Ritually deposited as part of ak 'atun-endmg ritual, the small-scale ceramic takes the form of
a turtle whose carapace is ringed by a series of thirteen ahau
glyphs (Fig. 10). In Mesoamerican cultures, the earth wasoften conceived as the back of a turtle, suggesting an identi?fication of this figurine as a representation of the world,
encompassed by the most common calendrical system of
post-Classic Yucatan, the k'atun cycle.19 These textual and
material artifacts attest to the circle's ability to function as an
abstract cosmogram with temporal indicators, since the cited
directionsmark the
sun's daily path from theeastern
horizonto the west, and thus the passage of time.
With their directional and territorial connotations, k'atun
wheels should not be understood as mere recordings of
temporal passages. Instead, these colonial artifacts func?
tioned as a kind of calendrical cartography; they provided a
mapping of space that embodied both a physical and tempo?ral dimensionality. Representations of territory were of sec?
ondary importance in k 'atun wheels, often only incidentallyincluded in some versions, such as Landa's transcription,
demonstrating their authors' primary interest in time com?
putations. In the colonial period, though, these prioritiesshifted. As Spanish authorities demanded images of land,boundaries, and frontiers, Maya artists relied on their preColumbian calendrical cartographs as models, omitting the
overtreferences
tocalendrical
concerns.However, for indig?
enous artists and viewers, the circular form itself retained a
deeper level of historical significance, allowing native agentsto maintain?in pictorial form?schematized accounts of
their cosmogenic beginnings.
The Mani Land Treaty and the Creation of MayaCartographyThe manuscript and accompanying map transcribed by Ste?
phens in 1842 documents a land treaty oncluded by YucatecMaya lineages in the summer of 1557.20 Fifteen years earlier,when Francisco de Montejo officially "conquered" the prov?ince with his establishment of Merida on the ruins of the
Maya city of Tiho in 1542, he found the peninsula dividedinto sixteen sovereign territories, individually controlled by a
single lineageor
alternatively loose federations of individu?ally led cities (Fig. II).21 Given the paucity of arable land inthe peninsula, these families continually disputed their
boundary lines in the hopes of controlling ever larger terri?tories and thus ensuring their people's survival.22 To ease this
source of dispute, the Spanish authorities demanded that the
indigenous leaders formally set their provincial boundaries as
a means to simplify processes of ideological conquest, and in
August 1557, they organized a meeting to this end. On Au?gust 15, the governors of the primary Xiu towns met in the
capital, Mani, the city the Europeans considered most neu?
tral. The Xiu then invited neighboring lineage heads and
accompanying governmental officials to witness the formal
walking of their territory, rewarding the visitors with sump?tuous gifts and feasting. All of the lineage heads (save theinfamous
leaderof
the Cocoms, Nachi Cocom of Sotuta, whofeigned illness to avoid the meetings but sent ambassadors inhis stead) convened at the monastery of Mani.23 Under theattentive supervision of the monastery's resident priests, the
Maya leaders walked the periphery of the Mani territory,clearly delineating their rightful land from that of their
neighbors. A known scribe, Gaspar Antonio Chi, a Christian?
ized Maya elite of the Xiu and Chi lineages, recorded the
proceedings and created the accompanying map.24While Stephens had the privilege of being the first North
American to view the Mani Land Treaty account of 1557,
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158 ART BULLETIN SEPTKMBER 201 0 VOLUME XCII NUMBER 3
p p??^^^^^^^^^H^^^^^^H^^^^^HE^^|KA^^^F^HwH^HE?/ Monjas?* :^^^^^^^^^^K^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^HI^^^^Hh^J^^^U| ?^HKSRStf from 7^/'.s/ ncientonumentsmB&S^^^^^^^^Bft Central merica,ondon: .Catherwood,
^^B^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^gff^^ff^^J^p^-- VmS^^^K^^^^^ 1844,i. (artworkn he ublic^^^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^^SBK-'--^^^^^^^ ^'"^?M5 tt^IvJ^
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MAYA CARTOGRAPHY IN EARLY COLONIAL YUCATAN 159
?
2S57
*r ?-v-v.INDIAN MAP
'*
?5 ??:?{?;??-> ' ?? ? ?'?v., * r:.
?* x. ?, i: ?? .. ?? ? ? ?? ?.
5 Charles Copley, after John Lloyd Stephens, Indian Map,from Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 1843, between 264 and 265.
Special Collections, Oregon State University (artwork in the
public domain)
duction.32 During the next four centuries, Maya scribes re?
peatedly transcribed the text, altering some tales, insertingothers into the "wrong" narrative place within the calendrical
katun counts, and, most interestingly, incorporating narra?
tive and ritual references to the newly introduced Christian
religion.33 The manuscript reached its completed form be?
tween 1824 and 1837.34Since this process occurred far away from the watchful eyes
ofChumayel's
resident Catholicpriests,
"The Book of theChilam Balam of Chumayel" is a highly hybridized textualand visual artifact that records features of the pre-Columbiannative worldview and also documents the self-conscious ap?
propriation and adaptation of Christianity into indigenousbelief systems.35 t isa colonial artifact that reflects the local?ized perception of the Chumayel Maya living amid the phys?ical, psychological, and ideological chaos of the early colonial
period. As such, the account ishighly localized, told from the
perspective of Chumayel residents. All tales included withinthe manuscript should be viewed as historical constructions,
6 The Bird Map of Yucatan, compiled late 18th century, from"The Book of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel," Princeton
Mesoamerican MSS, no. 4, The Princeton University Library(artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by The
Princeton University Library)
designed by the Maya elders of Chumayel as they negotiatedtheir contemporary colonial reality.
One such localized tale, what scholars have termed the
Hunak K'elEpic,
recounts theinfighting
within the Itza, oneof the ruling lineages that controlled the peninsula in thetwelfth century and thought by some to be ancestors of the
Xiu. This dispute resulted in the fall of the Itza capital city,Chichen Itza, in the thirteenth century and the city of Mayapan's subsequent rise to power at the hands of culture hero
Hunak K'el.36 Midway through the Hunak K'el story, theChumayel text falls back chronologically four hundred years,
violently interrupting the narrative flow of the later history.This section recalls a much earlier period of Yucatec history,the original ninth-century invasion and colonization by the Itza,
or the Itza Invasion Episode. The deep recession into time
suggests that the Itza Invasion Episode should be treated and
analyzed as a self-contained story. A later explanatory interrup?tion breaks the Itza Invasion Episode itself into two distinctsections, an initial nd a final invasion,
segmentingthe tale into
three distinct sections or chapters and thus dividing the HunakK'el story into five chapters, which can be segmented as:
I. First section of the Hunak K'el Epic (thirteenth entury)II. First section of the Itza Invasion Episode (ninth century)III. Explanatory interruption of the Itza Invasion Episode(sixteenth century)IV. Second section of the Itza Invasion Episode (ninth cen?
tury)V. Second section of the Hunak K'el Epic (thirteenth cen?
tury)
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150 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 20 10 VOLUME XCII NUMBER 3
7 The Relation Geogr?fica ap ofTeozacoalco, 1580, 54% X 69lA in.
(138 X 176 cm). The Benson LatinAmerican Collection, The General
Libraries, The University of Texas atAustin (artwork in the public domain;photograph provided by The NettieLee Benson Latin American Col?
lection, The General Libraries, The
University of Texas at Austin)
8 Katun Wheel (drawing by Felicia Phillips after the 16th-centurydrawing in Landa, Rela??n de las cosas de Yucatan, 1941)
While the insertion of the Itza Invasion Episode into themiddle of the Hunak K'el Epic might be taken as a scribalerror, made during the document's complex transcription
history, the tale's structural format is instrumental in eluci?
dating the cartographic style of the colonial Maya. It appearsas though this story, and presumably others that mirror its
composition now lost to the contemporary world, provided
9 K'atun Wheel(drawing by
FeliciaPhillips
after thedrawingca. 1824 from "The Book of the Chilam Balam of Kaua")
the mental template from which Gaspar Antonio Chi andother Maya mapmakers invented a distinctly native carto?
graphic practice in the early colonial period.37In the first ection of the Itza Invasion Episode, the initial
Itza conquest of the Yucatan is related, a process that surelytook decades to complete. The foreigners traveled in a coun?
terclockwise direction, circumscribing the northern penin
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MAYA CARTOGRAPHY IN EARLY COLONIAL YUCATAN \Q\
10 Profile of stone turtle found at Mayap?n and interred as
part of a k ?/im-ending ritual. Note the six ahau glyphs carvedaround the carapace rim (drawing by the author after Tatiana
Proskouriakoff, "The Artifacts of Mayap?n," in Mayap?n,Yucatan, Mexico, ed. Harry E. D. Pollock et al. [Washington,D.C.:
CarnegieInstitution of
Washington, 1962], fig. g)
11 Map of the Yucatan Peninsula with precontact kingdomsdelineated (drawing by the author)
sulawith the ring of their path, which consists of a loose circleof sixty-nine settlements. Predictably, the Jaguar Priest de?
scribes the Itza as beginning their invasion of the peninsula
from the east,the direction in
Mayaworldview associated with
beginnings and their metaphoric connotations, such as birth,foundation, and creation in general.38 Ppoole (P'oole)
was
the first settlement visited or established by the Itza, located
midway down the Yucatan's eastern coastline. From the sea?
side, the ancestors moved in a northwestern direction and
slowlymade their way across the peninsula, establishing Panabha as their eleventh and northernmost city. They then
walked toward the west, culminating their westward migra?tion at the city of Kinchil, their forty-first stablished settle?
ment. The southern movement began from Kinchil, and at
12 Map of the Xiu province, with Mani Land Treatylandmarks (drawing by the author)
their sixtieth stop they established the town of Tixmeuac.
Finally, they traveled back toward the east, completing their
journey at the sixty-ninth settlement of Cetelac. By the end of
the invasion, the group had completely circumambulated the
northern section of Yucatan, leaving little, if any, territoryunscouted (Fig. 13).
The first section of the Itza Invasion Episode consists of
sixty-nine action events that chronicle the Itza foundation of
settlements, many of which can be correlated with contem?
porary towns. By and large, this section is narrated in a listlike
formula,at times a mere
tallyof
vanquished cities,and
rep?resents the most simplistic language used in the entirety ofthe Hunak K'el Epic, relying on only four distinct phrasetypes. Beginning with the most complex phrasing, for twentyfive towns the narrator records not only the city's foundation,
referred to as an Itza "arrival," but also a single event in which
the invaders participated. Here, for example, is the account
of how Itza's first town, Ppoole, was established: "Whereupon
they departed and arrived at Ppoole, where the remainder of
the Itza were increased by number; they took the women of
Ppoole as their mothers."39 An elaboration of this basic struc?
ture is the occasional concluding remark "as it is called," "so
they said," or "as they said," formally reiterating the ancestral
construction of this story by emphasizing the tale as oft
repeated legend. By far the most common phrase type is the
simplest,a
phrasethat
merelystates the
appearanceof the
Itza in the city, prompting the narrative to be performed andread as a mere list:
Then they went to Ppuztunich.Then they went to Pucnalchac.
Then they went to Ppencuyut.Then they went to Paxuuet.
Then they arrived at Tixaya.Then they arrived at Tiztiz, as it is called.Then they arrived at Chican.
. . .40
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162 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2010 VOLUME XCII NUMBER 3
13 Map of the Yucatan Peninsula, with the Itza Invasion route inscribed (drawing by the author)
The essential structuring element of this narrative is a se?
quentially ordered chronology, but it is a chronology withoutthe defining limits of a delineated temporal system. A date isnot given for the initial Itza arrival, nor is the length of their
stay at specific loci provided. However, the linear, flowing,event-based narrative leaves little doubt as to the sequence of
named events; the Itza clearly begin their journey at Ppoole,continue to sixty-eight more cities, and end their journey at
Cetelac. Absent fixed or absolute time, that leaves space as
the ordering principle of this "historical" narrative, suggest?
ing the hazy time of primordial beginnings.The Chumayel narrator marked the end of the Itza
Invasion's first section by the sudden and complete aban?
donment of the listlike narrative style in favor of theloosest literary language used in the tale. After relating the
initial invasion's completion with the founding of Cetelac,the Chumayel Jaguar Priest furnished a detailed and highly
hybridized explanation of the nature of the invasion tale
and what it recounts.
These are the names of whatever towns there were and thenames of the wells, in order that it may be known where they
passed in their march to see whether the district was good,whether it was suitable for settlement here. They set in order thenames of the district according to the command of our Lord
God. He itwas who set the land in order. He created everythingon earth.... But these were the people who named the district,who named the wells, who named the villages, who named the
land because no one had arrived here in this neck of land whenwe arrived here.41
According to this explanation, the Itza invaded the Yucatan
Peninsula in pursuit of arable land ("to seewhether the districtwas good, whether it was suitable for settlement here"). The
Jaguar Priest also clarified that it was "our Lord God," theChristian godhead, who was responsible for the ordering of
the territory, but his ancestors named the various topographiesbecause "no one had arrived here in this neck of the land when
we arrived here." By insisting on his ancestors' responsibility of
naming, and thereby conveniently ignoring more ancient Yu
catec peoples, their place-names, and their history, the JaguarPriest intentionally transformed the historical Itza Invasion into
a tale of primordial beginnings.A linguistic analysis of the city names codified by the Itza
during the tale's first section also attests to the primordialnature of this story. As mentioned above, when the Itza
established particular cities, they are often described as en?
gaging in a particular anecdotal event. Of the twenty-fivecities that are granted an associated narrative event, twentythree of these toponyms are linguistically derived from the
event enacted by the Itza in that very locale (see app. 1 for a
sampling of these linguistic derivations).42 For example, at
their first stop, Ppoole, the city isdenoted as the place where"the remainder of the Itza were increased in number." As
Roys rightfully noted, the place-name Ppoole functions as a
pun on the event that transpired there; ppohal can be directlytranslated as "to be increased in numbers."43 This relation
between city name and anecdotal event also defines the
place-name of the Itza's second stop, a city named Ake. The
narrator adds aqualifying
secondphrase
to this section of thetale, characterizing this city as the place "where they were
born," conceivably referring to the progeny of the Itza who
began the invasion in the previous polity, Ppoole. Whenthe place-name Ake is linguistically deconstructed, it is
discovered that its root, ak, can be directly translated as
something recently made, green, or fresh.44 Hence, "Ake"
can be glossed as the place where they were recently madeor born.
The narrative function of the relation between place-nameand event is to implicate the Itza in the foundation of these cities
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MAYA CARTOGRAPHY IN EARLY COLONIAL YUCAT?N I53
regardless of this population's provenance prior to the ninth
century invasion. This serves to situate the Itza in the Yucatan at
the moment of its creation and relegate the towns of the first
part of the invasion to that of primordial beginnings. Given the
narrative's purposeto
shapeits invasions as
foundation events,the circular form utilized in this primordial migration is per?fectly fitting. he spherical processional route replicates on a
grand scale the ritual path traditionally ssociated with foundational events such as the establishment of individual cities. For a
civic founding, townspeople circumambulated in a counter?
clockwise circuit, physically delineating the geographic bordersof the town.45 This processional reproduced exactly the chro?
nological order of the creation of the directional world trees
(north, west, south, and east) as recalled in an additional section
of "The Book of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel."46 With thisritual action, towns reenacted the creation of the universe,
demonstrating the community's rehearsal of both primordialevents and the continuation of cosmic history. Given the indig?enous view of time as cyclical, each founding could be consid?
ered notonly
as a reenactment but also as aregression
into
primordial moments of creation, fusing cosmic time with the
community's own narrative history and explaining the recastingof the historical Itza Invasion as a cosmogenic event.
After the Jaguar Priest completed his "off-the-cuff expla?nation of the primordial Itza Invasion, he began the Invasion
Episode's second section. In this portion of the tale, the Itza
ancestors similarly establish Yucatec cities, but unlike in the
first Itza Invasion, a greater level of historical specificity is
included.47 The unifying factor among this seemingly ran?
dom list of cities, totaling 102, is that in comparison to thetowns mentioned in the first invasion, the cities conquered in
the second section played more prominent roles in Yucatec
history, including references to known Yucatec lineages and
particular ritual actions.48 An observable migration route
cannot bediscerned
for thesecond invasion,
nor canthe
majority of the names be linguistically linked to anecdotalevents, as could the place-names of the first invasion. The
lack of a circular course suggests that the events that tran?
spired in these locales were understood as historical, not
primordial. Their physical location within the province sup?ports this theory; all but one (Sanhil) is located within thecircle of creation delineated by the first migration, indicatinga substantive difference between settlements of the first and
second Itza invasions (Fig. 13).The structural difference displayed in the telling of "pri?
mordial" versus "historical" Yucatec history provides evidence
for the kinds of spatial imaginings that resulted in the circu?lar maps of the colonial period. When the Itza journey is
grafted onto a contemporary and mathematically "accurate"
mapof the northern Yucatan
Peninsula,a
pattern emerges.The Itzas' path roughly follows a circular shape that delin?eates a counterclockwise course around the region (Fig. 13).In their migration path, the Itza circumscribed the northernsection of the peninsula and thereby enclosed the major
Yucatec cities in the center of their route. This form is toodeliberate to be accidental, pointing to an intentional designon the part of the Maya narrator and a culturally constructed
perception of primordial spaces of creation. By utilizing this
spatial sequence of form, the Jaguar Priest supplied a meta
phoric link between known accounts of creation and the
ninth-century conquest. Both the creation of the cosmos and
the conquest of the Yucatan were accomplished utilizing this
counterclockwise circular route. In all accounts, indications
of time are absent and space itself becomes the organizing
principle; it isa
spatial history. Omitting chartable historicaltime implies that these events transpired within the hazyprimordial time of cosmogenesis, despite their known occur?
rence in the ninth century.We can imagine a circular map that sets down a visual image
of the story (Fig. 14). Of course, this isonly my rendering, but
given the evidence of the circular route, combined with the
explanatory interruption that serves to segment the two sections
of the story, it can be argued that the story's visualization is that
of a chain of towns conquered in primordial time composing a
ringed composition. The towns mentioned in the second sec?
tion of the conquest that are known from other historical
sources and thus reference historical time appear in the center
of the composition, the area that actually serves to make visual
the local identities of the story-map's creator, a person of the
Xiulineage
who resided in or nearChumayel.
TheMani Land Treaty MapOf the Mani Land Treaty's three extant copies, described
above, I examine the map included in the "Xiu Chronicles"
(Fig. 3), as this is the most faithful transcription of the
original document produced during the Mani meetings in
August 1557. At the bequest of Spanish officials, GasparAntonio Chi produced the cartograph.49 In this regionalmap, Chi situated the capital of the Xiu territory, ani, in thecenter of the composition. He symbolically represented his
capital city with a thumbnail illustration of the city's Fran?ciscan monastic complex built only a decade earlier on the
ruins of Mani's primary pre-Columbian pyramid. The Xiu's
other towns are similarly signified by carefully differentiated
church pictographs and are linked to the capital by straightlines, presumably signifying roads or pathways. Demonstrat?
ing his local knowledge, Chi depicted each local pictographas a unique structure and therefore transformed the signsinto toponyms, symbolic referents to named geographic lo?
cations.50 He glossed the name of each town in Latin char?
acters in close proximity to the accompanying toponyms.Chi inscribed the settlements surrounding Xiu domina?
tion, which were dependent on other family lineages, be?
tween the double embedded lines of the map's framingcircle. He chose to render these peripheral cities, unlike the
towns in the center of the composition, with identical square
shaped structures surmounted by crosses, presumably signi?
fying chapels. These symbols are not individualized so as to
function as distinct toponyms; instead, they are mere picto?
graphsmeant to denote "town" in an abstract sense. Above
the circular form lies a list of linked place-names, an addi?
tional schematized view of foreign territories located to thenortheast and east of the Xiu province.
Despite the presence of Spaniards during theMani confer?ence (the Tulane document specifically recognizes a Spanishjudge, Felipe Manrique, as supervising the establishment ofthe border near Uxmal), it is unlikely that these colonistsinfluenced the document's manufacture. Chi's European
style education clearly did not include cartographic trainingin the Spanish mode, forcing him to rely on his uniquely
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1(54 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2010 VOLUME XCII NUMBER 3
East
North
14 Transposition of the Itza Invasion
Episode as a round Maya map of thecolonial period (drawing by theauthor)
indigenous spatial perception, which understood east as the
prominent direction of the universe. The preference given to
east as the organizing direction is in line with other earlycolonial indigenous representations of space from the Amer?
icas, which points to this map's native production.51 At the
center point of the composition, Mani becomes the physicalpivot of the entire province, although Mani does not geomet?
rically inhabit the exact center of the Xiu territory. Chi
positioned all of the dependent Xiu towns according to theirrelative spatial relation with Mani; their physical organizationis not precise in terms of a geometric grid, but their locations
roughly correspond to their actual directional alignments.The top of the map marks the eastern-northeastern limit of
the province, signaled by the town of Teabo. The artist placedOxkutzcab to the right of Mani, designating the southern
edge of the province, while Mama on the left side of thedocument marks the territory's northern boundary.
Compositionally, the circle segregates towns that weredeemed more central to Xiu history and contemporary real?
ity from those that were not under their domain and there?
fore were considered peripheral. Visually, the document sug?
gests the relative insignificance of towns located within thelines of the circumscribed form: pictorially, they are not givena distinct identity in terms of the graphic referent (they allutilize pictographs and not toponyms) and are all displayedat the exact same distance from the capital city. hose politiesthat are not included under the Xiu domination are granteda structural similarity; they are equally distant from the cap?ital city not in terms of geographic space but in regard to the
communal Mani identity. These peripheral towns have been
effectively "othered" from their Xiu neighbors.
As such, The Mani Land Treaty Map can be understood as acolonial Maya embodiment of what Richard Kagan terms a
"communicentric view."52 In his analysis of early modern cityviews, Kagan discusses artists' tendencies to intentionally ignorethe city's structural physicality, the urbs, in favor of depicting "its
human side, the civitas," by including anecdotal and descriptivedetails such as local costume, ritual, and customs. These com?
municentric views functioned metaphorically, setting forth "the
idea of the city as a community with a special, distinctive char?
acter along with the memories and traditions that served to
distinguish that community from another."53 Obviously, The
Mani Land TreatyMap lacks figurative representations of itscitizens so common in the European city views towhich Kaganrefers, but the idea of a regional identity shere evoked by thecircular cartographic format, which speaks to "memories and
traditions" unique to the citizenry of Mani. The circular formitself serves as a kind of shorthand metaphor, referencing Ma?
ni's role in cosmogonic events.
Regional identity is also signaled in Chi's rendering of theXiu cities. The Maya artist-scribe granted each of the Xiu
dominated "historical" cities a unique toponym to the extent
that even the architectural style of the local parish churchesis identifiable. This conveys a level of attention to communityevents and narrative not granted for the peripheral-primor?dial towns, which are all identified with identical pictographs.Interestingly, even the pre-Columbian city of Uxmal is givenan idiosyncratic glyph; in fact, Uxmal's symbol replicates one
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MAYA CARTOGRAPHY IN EARLY COLONIAL YUCATAN 1?5
of the most famous architectural structures completed in the
Puuk style, the "Convento," seen in the background of Cath
erwood's lithograph (Fig. 4).54 The particularity with whichChi rendered each glyph suggests that he had a vested inter?est in
pictorially displayingindividual
communityidentities.
Following the structure laid out in the Itza Invasion story thatof primordial time followed by a formal interruption and thenfollowed with historical time), TheMani Land Treaty ap reflectsa visualization of a localized Xiu creation story. To begin with,the peripheral towns are established in a circular arrangement
mirroring the primordial founding of the region in the firstsection of the Itza Invasion Episode.55 Whereas the narrative
structure relies on a formal interruption to separate rhetorically
primordial from historical events, this divide is registered withinmaps by a change in compositional type. The moment of cos
mogonic beginnings is segregated from what follows by a formalbreak from the ringed composition to that of an itinerarymap?interestingly, the cartographic type that speaks directly to
lived spatial experience in European cultures.56 Thus, the "his?
torical"portion
of the Xiu creation(that
whichreplicatesthe second part of the Itza Invasion Episode) isalluded to in the
placement of Mani and her dependent cities in the centerof the cosmos, the obvious location for what residents con?
sidered the world's most influential city.
Admittedly, the actual route followed by Maya elders in1557 during the enactment of the Mani Land Treaty does not
observe an uninterrupted procession around the Mani prov?ince. As mentioned above, the survey was completed in two
parts, beginning at the northern edge of the province:
It ishere at Hoal; this is the name of the well which is on theroad to Tihoo (Merida) to the north of Tichac and where a
cross was placed. Next is Zacmuyalna where a cross was placedat the edge of the lands of the people of Tecoh. The next is
Kochilhaa where a cross was placed. Next is Cheenkeken
where there is a cross. . . .57
After this counterclockwise circuit around the northern and
eastern boundaries was marked, participants returned to the
region's center, Mani, reconvened at the Hoal cenote, and set
out on a clockwise route to chart the western boundaries.
However, Chi's representation of the event ignores this route,
displaying his home territory as an uninterrupted circle, thus
aligning his map with narrative tropes such as that used in theItza Invasion Episode. This serves to idealize both the Mani
territory and the event of the Mani Land Treaty, glossing over
any political strife, which surely dominated the proceedings.Two additional Maya maps from colonial Yucatan and four
others from other regions of New Spain utilize the circle as a
compositional framework, further pointing to the derivation
of thiscartographic
innovation from establishedpre-Colum?bian sources, such as the narrative devices described above.
Interestingly, one of the Maya maps, TheMap of Sotuta, maypredate TheMani Land TreatyMap (it has been proposed thatit was produced in 1545), making it the only circular mapproduced specifically for a native audience and without Span?ish intervention.58 The other Maya examples, The Map of
Acanceh (a 1763 copy of a sixteenth-century map) and The
Map ofTabasco (1581), were drawn specifically at the bequestof Spanish officials, much like the production context of The
Mani Land Treaty Map.59 The similarity between all fourcolonial Maya cartographs makes a convincing case that the
structure of creation narratives furnished an ideologicalframework for imaging colonial spaces.60
This mental template may also have been present in addi?
tional Mesoamerican pre-Columbian societies. The use of
thiscompositional
form is seen in threemaps
from the
region of Oaxaca, two of them submitted as part of Philip IFsRelaciones geogr?ficas project in 1580, The Relation Geogr?ficaMap of Teozacoalco (Fig. 7) and The Map ofAmoltepec.61 hile
it is outside the scope of this study to provide a detailedexamination of these extremely complex Mixtec maps, I note
not only the similarity in composition but also an even more
defined reference to localized historical events, particularlywithin TheMap of Teozacoalco.62 In this cartograph, the artistutilized the circular format to reference localized cosmolo?
gies, but he included detailed references to local history,much like the second section of the Itza Invasion Episode.Within the rings of the circle, on its left hemisphere and also
just outside the circle's left edge, the artist portrayed columnsof paired individuals. These anecdotal figures stand for
named members of the localroyal lineage
and aredisplayedin chronological order, effectively serving to display Teoza
coalco's most recent lived history and linking this Oaxacan
cartographic tradition to that of Yucatan. The compositional
similarity opens up the possibility that this conception ofspace as historically determined may in fact be a Mesoameri?
can, rather than simply a Maya, ideological framework.
Within the context of sixteenth-century New Spain, cartogra?
phy emerged as a distinct visual discourse inwhich numerouscolonial actors performed the cultural negotiations that defined
this early stage of the Spanish Conquest. For many indigenouscommunities, when Spanish authorities demanded representa?tions of home territory, he dictate afforded an opportunity forthe preservation of centuries-old traditional belief systems. In
the case of the colonial Maya of Yucatan, and perhaps theirMixtec
neighborsto the
southwest,the administrative desire for
maps resulted in the creation of a new pictorial genre, a defined
cartographic tradition derived directly from ancient narrative
formats, such as the Itza Invasion Episode preserved in "The
Book of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel." The resulting visualartifacts, like The Mani Land Treaty Map, were intercultural in
their circular design, recognizable as a map for Spanish audi?
ences. However, for their Maya creators and viewers, the carto
graphs registered notions of primordial creation and the role oftheir home community in this cosmic history, allowing for the
preservation of community identity during the cultural and
physical chaos of colonization.
Amara L. Solari specializes in the rt and cultural production of
pre-ColumbianMesoamerica and
earlycolonial Mexico. She is cur?
rently working on a book-length roject, investigating the ways inwhichMaya conceptions f space and their ssociated visual culture
affected ultural identities nd religious practices in early colonialYucatan [Department ofArt History, thePennsylvania State Uni?
versity, University Park, Pa. 16802, [email protected]].
NotesThis paper was developed from two chapters of my dissertation, "Maya SpatialBiographies in Communal Memory and Cosmic Time: The Franciscan Evan?
gelical Campaign of Itzmal, Yucatan," completed inJune 2007 at the Univer?
sity f California, Santa Barbara. Iwould like to acknowledge the support of
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166 ART BULLETIN SEPTEMBER 2010 VOLUME XCII NUMBER 3
Appendix 1Translation of Towns "Founded" in the Itza Invasion Episode's First Section
City Name Maya Translation Described Event
P'oole
Ake
TixchelNinum
Chikin-tsonot
Tzuc-oopTah-cabo
KikilPanabha
Cucuchilhaa
p'oolhal= to increase, multiply
ak' = something recently made,
fresh, or greenchel = to stretch out or prolongnum = too manychikin = west
tzuc-ba = aparttah kab = honeycombkikil = bloodypanabha
= artificial well
kuchil = to seat oneself or
guard a place; ha'= water
"where they were increased in number"
"where they were born"
"where their words were prolonged""where their words were too many""where their faces were turned to the west"
"where they remained apart""where they stirred the honey""where they contracted dysentery""where they dug for deep water"
"where they settled at the deep water"
my adviser, Jeanette Favrot Peterson, and committee members, Mark Meadowand Gerardo Aldana. Iwould also like to thank the two anonymous reviewersfor The Art Bulletin who provided insightful commentary, as well as MatthewRestall, Amy J. Buono, and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives for their invaluable assistanceand thoughtful review of this paper's earlier drafts.
1. Stephens's accounts of this and his earlier 1839-40 expedition were
published in 1841 as Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas andYucatan and in 1843 as Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. These widely readand highly romanticized accounts whetted the public imagination with
Stephens's expressive use of hyperbolic language and the inclusion of
beautifully illustrated lithographs completed by the expedition's ac?
companying draftsman, Frederick Catherwood (Fig. 4).2. Friar Villalpando, father of the Yucatec evangelical program, founded
the Mani mission on September 29, 1547, the Day of Michaelmas, andthereby dedicated it to the Archangel Michael. See Richard Perry and
Rosalind Perry, Maya Missions (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Espadana Press,2002), 126.
3. The Xiu-Cocom rivalry began centuries earlier with the fall of Mayap?nin the late fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century it reached a boil?ing point when the elite family members of the Xiu lineage embarkedon a pilgrimage to the tz'onot (cenote) of Chichen Itza to petition deitiesfor an assured rainfall by offering human sacrifices. The overlandtravel between Mani and Chichen Itza required the Xiu to passthrough Cocom territory, for which they were granted permission. In
Bishop Diego de Landa's account of the event, the Cocom gave theXiu "lodging all together in a large house, [and] set it on fire andkilled those who [tried to] escape." Landa, Landa's relaci?n de las cosasde Yucatan, trans, and ed. Alfred M. Tozzer (Cambridge, Mass.: Pea
body Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, 1941), 54-55.
4. John L. Stephens, Incidents ofTravel in Yucatan (Mexico City: Pan?orama, 2003), 270-73.
5. Ibid., 273.
6. The Mani Land Treaty Map and the rest of the "Xiu Chronicles" are cur?
rently housed in the Yucatan Collection of the Latin American Libraryat Tulane University, New Orleans, L497.2051/M278 RBC MARL
7. Although Stephens had the original Mani Land Treaty Map before him
during the transcription process, his resulting "Indian Map" is not afaithful reproduction. In addition to ignoring the city of Pustunich and
rerouting many of the depicted footpaths, Stephens reinterpreted thetoponymic symbol for the ancient site of Uxmal, representing the ruins
with a elevation view of the "Convento" architectural complex ratherthan an image of the structure's plan, which is used in the sixteenthcentury map.
8. While circular maps had fallen out of fashion in European courts fol?
lowing the publication of Ptolemy's Geography toward the end of thefifteenth century, the circle was widely used as a structuring form forearlier medieval mappae mundi, created inmonastic contexts. See David
Woodward, "Medieval Mappaemundi," in Cartography inPrehistoric, An?cient, and Medieval Europe and the editerranean, ed. J. B. Harley and
Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286.
9. I use the term "invention" self-consciously to highlight the fact that
prior to the Spanish colonization, the diverse cultures of Mesoamerica
did not possess a defined cartographic practice. This is not to say that
representations of space or territory were unknown to native pictorialtraditions. However, scholars have yet to find strong evidence of a dis?tinct cartographic practice whose sole purpose was the representationof regional space. For an alternative argument, specifically regardingthe existence of pre-Columbian urban plans, see Alessandra Russo, Elrealismo circular: Tierras, espacios y paisajes de la cartografia indigena Novo
hispana siglos xvi y xvii (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autonoma deMexico, Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, 2005).
10. Throughout this paper I use J. Brian Harley's inclusive definition of
"map" as describing "refracted images of the socially-constructed world"(as opposed to impartial images of space) that therefore represent an"embedded social vision," embodying certain forms of power and au?
thority. Harley, The New Nature ofMaps: Essays in theHistory of Cartogra?phy, ed. Paul Laxton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,2001), 278.
11. "The Book of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel" is presently housed inthe Princeton University Library, Garrett-Gates Mesoamerican Manu?
scripts, no. 4, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections (here?after Garrett-Gates Mesoamerican Manuscripts).
12. During the Classic period (250-850 CE), three calendrical forms domi?nated public artworks and encompassed both the linear and cyclicaltemporal reckonings. Linear time was defined by the "Long Count," acalendar that utilized an effective 0 date corresponding to 3114 BCE inthe Gregorian calendar. From the start date, time expanded in a linearroute, although itwas organized by cycles of one-, twenty-, nd fourhundred-year counts and also larger cycles. Alternatively, the tzolk'incalendar was strictly cyclical, composed of an ever-repeating cycle oftwenty day names intersected with the numbers one through thirteen,and thus totaling 260 days. The ha 'ab calendar was correlated to theorbit of the earth around the sun and was thus composed of 365 dayssegmented into eighteen months of twenty days each, followed by a
five-day minimonth. The ha 'aband tzolk'in ran congruently to composethe calendar round, repeating the same day in both calendars everyfifty-two years. Robert J. Sharer, The Ancient Maya, 5th ed. (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1994), 560-70.
13. Ibid., 572.
14. For an overview of the historical development of this calendrical cycle,see Prudence M. Rice, Maya Calendar Origins: Monuments, Mythistory,and the aterialization of Time (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).
15. Rice (ibid., 52) has recently pointed out the compositional similaritybetween the colonial Maya k'atun wheels and other motifs of pre-Co?lumbian artistic production, including the round petroglyphs carvedinto rock outcroppings surrounding Teotihuacan. For further discus?sion of similar circular carvings, see Clemency Coggins, "The Shape of
Time: Some Political Implications of a Four-Part Figure," American An?
tiquity 5, no. 4 (1980): 727-39; and Anthony F. Aveni, "Out of Teoti?huacan: Origins of the Celestial Canon inMesoamerica," inMesoamerica's Classic Heritage, from Teotihuacan to the ztecs, ed. David Carrasco,
Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions (Boulder: University Press of Colo?rado, 2000), 253-69.
16. Ralph L. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan, 2nd ed. (Nor?man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 184; Karl A. Taube, "A Pre
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MAYA CARTOGRAPHY IN EARLY COLONIAL YUCATAN 1?7
hispanic Maya Katun Wheel," Journal of Anthropological Research 44, no. 2(1988): 195-98; and Michel Antochiw, Historia cartografica de la Penin?sula de Yucatan (Campeche, Mex.: Centro de Investigation y de Estudios Avanzados del I.P.N., 1994), 38.
17. As argued by Matthew Restall and John F. Chuchiak IV, while pub?lished today as a singular text, Landa's Relacion is actually an "arbitrarycollection" of the Franciscan's writings, composed during his years in
Yucatan and Spain. The manuscript appears to be the product of threeor four compilers, all working after Landa's death in 1579. For a fullerdiscussion of this manuscript's history, see Restall and Chuchiak, "AReevaluation of the Authenticity of Fray Diego de Landa's Relacion delas cosas de Yucatan" Ethnohistory 49, no. 3 (2002): 651-69.
18. "The Book of the Chilam Balam of Kaua" is in the Princeton UniversityLibrary, Garrett-Gates Mesoamerican Manuscripts, no. 6.
19. Taube, "A Prehispanic Maya Katun Wheel," 193-94. While the Mayap?n turtle clearly provides evidence for the pre-Columbian conceptual?ization of the katun as a circle, the embedding of directional associa?tions within the radial k'atun wheels produced after the Spanish
Conquest is a colonial invention, possibly derived from the influence ofEuropean wind compasses. See Victoria R. Bricker and Helga-MariaMiram, An Encounter of Two Worlds: The Book of Chilam Balam ofKaua
(New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, 2002), 75.
20. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 273, also mentions a documentdated to 1556 that appears to be a record of an earlier land treaty.
21. While Spanish authorities can be said to have controlled the northwest?ern
portionof the
peninsulafrom
approximatelythe end of the six?
teenth century, the southeastern expanse remained largely uncon?trolled, to be incorporated only in the eighteenth century. See Grant
D. Jones, Anthropology and History in Yucatan (Austin: University Press ofTexas, 1977), xiv.
22. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan, 178, claims that Yucatecagricultural techniques such as slash-and-burn farming resulted in a
scarcity of arable land, causing continual disputes over access and own?
ership.23. Matthew Restall, Maya Conquistador (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 225.
24. Ibid., 144. For further information on this important colonial actor, seeConstance Cortez, "Gaspar Antonio Chi and the Xiu Family Tree"(PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1995).
25. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan, 179-80.
26. The copy made for the town of Yaxakumche is included in the"Cronica de Oxkutzcab," located in the Peabody Museum of Harvard
University, Cambridge, Mass. The Calotmul account was copied by JuanPio Perez and is incorporated into his Codice Perez, trans. Gustavo VegaIbarra, ed. Ralph Roys (Merida, Mex.: Ediciones de la Liga de Acci?nSocial, 1949).
27. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan, 181, notes that in a1547 map of the Sotuta province, the Mani border lay farther to the
west, thus cutting into the Cocoms' "rightful" territory, causing Roys to
"suspect the Xiu of taking advantage of the favor they enjoyed with theSpaniards to encroach on the land of their neighbors to the east." Ihave utilized Roys's orthography throughout my analysis of the inva?sion tale and in the accompanying maps and appendix to avoid confu?sion. The modern spelling for each place-name follows Roys's whenknown.
28. Taube, "A Prehispanic Maya Katun Wheel," 198.
29. It is difficult to ascertain the exact production date of "The Book ofthe Chilam Balam of Chumayel," but some scholars have been able toreckon the relative dating by taking into account the inclusion of Euro?pean cosmological ideas. This is especially true for the earliest inclu?sions (those most important for this study), since they demonstrate aPtolemaic conception of the cosmos that was out-of-date in early-seven?teenth-century Europe. For example, see Gerardo Villalobos Aldana,"Oracular Science: Uncertainty in the History of Maya Astronomy"(PhD diss., Harvard University, 2001). The sections I examine from"The Book of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel" fall into this categoryand thus record a pre-Columbian worldview despite the inclusion ofEuropean iconography. Moreover, some calendrical dates, such as thedate for summer solstice, "the longest day," is given as June 11 in the
Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar
during the Vatican's Gregorian reforms of 1582 in order to correct theincongruence between the lunar and liturgical year. Therefore, thesections of the "Chilam Balam" that utilize this calendar most likelypredate 1582. See A. D. Wright, The Counter-Reformation: Catholic Europeand the on-Christian World (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 95.
30. Many scholars have addressed the motivations for the Franciscan or?der's New World evangelical campaign and its common strategies. For
example, see John L. Phelan, The Millennial Kingdom of the ranciscans ofthe ezv World, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970);
Edwin Edward Sylvest, Motifs of Franciscan Mission Theory in Sixteenth
Century New Spain, Province of theHoly Gospel (Washington, D.C.: Acad?emy of American Franciscan History, 1975); and Lino Gomez Canedo,"Franciscans in the Americas: A Comprehensive View," in Franciscan
Presence in the Americas (Washington, D.C.: Academy of American Fran?ciscan History, 1983).
31. Victoria R. Bricker has discerned the presence of hieroglyphic spellingrules, what she calls the "last gasp of Maya hieroglyphic writing," insome colonial manuscripts, such as "The Book of the Chilam Balam of
Chumayel," deducing that they were copied directly from hieroglyphicsources. For further discussion of the relation between hieroglyphic
writing and its translation into the Latin alphabet, see Bricker, "TheLast Gasp of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing in the Books of the ChilamBalam of Chumayel and Chan Can," in Word and Image inMaya Culture:Explorations in Language, Writing, and Representation, ed. W. F. Hanksand D. S. Rice (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), 39-50.
32. Although many such hybridized books existed in the early colonial pe?riod, perhaps one from each town, today books of the Chilam Balamare extant only in photographic records or in folio form from thetowns of Chumayel, Tizimin, Tusik, Ixil, Raua, Tekax, Chan Kan, Mani,and Nah. See Bricker and Miram, An Encounter of Two Worlds, 1. Oth?ers, such as those from Nabula, Tihosuco, Tixcocob, and Hocob?, areknown from references in early-twentieth-century literature but havebeen lost or hidden during the course of the century. See Ralph L.Roys, trans, and ed., The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Washington,D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1933; reprint, Norman: University of Okla?homa Press, 1967), 6.
33. Themost
obvious insertion into the "Chilam Balam" is sections of theMoorish-Spanish tale of Doncella Teodor, originally a tale from TheArabian Nights. For a discussion of the tale's inclusion, see GordonBrotherston, Book of the ourth World: Reading the ative Americas throughTheir Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Marga?ret R. Parker, The Story of a Story across Cultures: The Case of the oncellaTeodor (London: Tamesis, 1996), 11-13, 28, 124; and Aldana, "OracularScience," 281-83.
34. Given the inclusion of a tale in the document with the date of 11Ahau, also shared by the Tizimin and Mani "Chilam Balams," Munro S.Edmonson concluded that a Maya scribe completed the manuscript inits final form between 1824 and 1837. See Edmonson, trans., Heaven
Born Merida and Its Destiny: The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Aus?tin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 1-2. Edmonson's history of thetext contrasts with Roys's, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 7, whoclaims that a Maya man, Juan Jose Hoil, compiled it from an unknownsource toward the end of the colonial period in 1782. According to
Roys, most of the manuscript iswritten in Hoil's hand, including hissignature and date. Thereafter, a few adaptations and additions were
incorporated into the document, as evidenced by a change in hand?writing. Hoil eventually gave the folios to his son, who became a Catho?
lic priest, and he in turn bequeathed them to Bishop Crescencio Carrillo yAncona during the 1860s.
35. In his investigation of how colonial Maya land grants elucidate pre-Co?lumbian worldviews, Restall, Maya Conquistador, 129, similarly acknowl?edges the "traces of Conquest-era perspectives while also reflecting thecultural impact of centuries of colonialism." Bricker and Miram, AnEncounter of Two Worlds, 1-88, take a similar approach in their analysisof Maya appropriation and perception of European scientific knowl?
edge in the early years of Spanish occupation.36. "The Chilam Balam of Chumayel," fols. 3r-6r. For a complete tran?
scription of the Mayan text and an accompanying English translation,see Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 16-19, 66-84.
37. The narrative structure can also be found in the Quiche Maya colonialtext, the Popol Vuh, and hieroglyphic inscriptions from various hiero?glyphic texts from Palenque, all of which record cosmogonic tales. SeeGerardo Aldana, The Apotheosis of anaab' Pakal: Science,History, and Reli?gion at ClassicMaya Palenque (Boulder: University Press of Colorado,2007), 151-57; and Amara L. Solari, "Maya Spatial Biographies in Com?
munal Memory and Cosmic Time: The Franciscan Evangelical Cam?
paign of Itzmal, Yucatan" (PhD diss., University of California, Santa
Barbara, 2007), 63-65.38. Numerous authors have analyzed the cultural and ideological impor?
tance of the east among the Yucatec Maya and itsmaterialization inconcrete artifacts such as architectural programs. See, for example,
Arthur Green Miller,"
'The Little Descent': Manifest Destiny from theEast," International Congress ofAmericanists 8 (1976); and idem, On theEdge of the ea: Mural Painting at Tancah-Tulum (Washington, D.C.:Dumbarton Oaks, 1982). For further information on directional signifi?cance in linguistic contexts of the contemporary Maya, seeWilliam
Hanks, Referential Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990);and John M. Watanabe, "In theWorld of the Sun: A Cognitive Modelof Mayan Cosmology," Man 18, no. 4 (1983): 710-28.
39. "The Chilam Balam of Chumayel," fol. 3v, trans. Roys, The Book of Chi?lam Balam of Chumayel, 70.
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40. "The Chilam Balam of Chumayel," fol. 4v, trans. Roys, The Book of Chi?lam Balam of Chumayel, 72.
41. "The Chilam Balam of Chumayel," fol. 5r, trans. Roys, The Book of Chi?lam Balam of Chumayel, 72.
42. I have also been able to provide translations for thirteen additional
place-namesthat are not associated with a
specificevent in the extant
version of "The Book of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel." I believethese narrative anecdotes have been lost in the past centuries; origi?nally, each town visited by the Itza was recalled with an associatedevent.
43. Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 70. Alfredo Barrera
V?squez, Diccionario Maya Cordemex, ed. Juan Ramon Bastarrachea Manzano et al. (Merida, Mex.: Ediciones Cordemex, 1980), 698. The trans?lation in the Cordemex is "acrentarse o multiplicarse," to increase or
multiply oneself. Interestingly, a similar word in Mayan, p'olmal, is de?fined as "mercadear, tratar y contratar, comprar y vender" (to market,to contract, to buy and to sell). Given P'oole's role as an important
Maya trading and merchant town in the pre-Columbian era, due to its
strategic location on the peninsula's east coast, it is just as feasible thatthe provided anecdotal information could be glossed as "where the Itza
shopped/traded/bought/sold." Regardless, the relation between the
city's name and its related historical event remains the same: the placename records metonymically the associated anecdote.
44. V?squez, Diccionario Maya Cordemex, 7.
45. A. J. Garcia Zambrano, "Early Colonial Evidence of Pre-Columbian Rit?uals of Foundation," in Seventh
PalenqueRound Table, ed. M. G. Robert?
son and V. M. Fields (San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Insti?tute, 1994), 217-28.
46. For an alternative view of the symbolic importance assigned to the
Maya directions, primarily the notion that values are associated notwith the directions but instead with the spaces marked by the solsticesand equinox, see Franz Tichy, "Order and Relationship of Space andTime in Mesoamerica: Myth or Reality?" inMesoamerican Sites and WorldViews, ed. E. P. Benson (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collections, 1981), 217-45.
47. Michel M. Davoust has posited an alternative reading of this narrativedivision. He argues that this tale, rather than representing a "primor?dial" and "historical" section of human chronology, recalls two distinctinvasions of the Itza, the first occurring in the ninth century and thesecond in the twelfth. See Davoust, "Les migrations des Itzas et de Hunac Ceel dans le Chilam Balam de Chumayel et la geographie politique du nord Yucatan classique et postclassique," Mayab 15 (2002):61-78.
48. The exception to this structural distinction is Uxmal, which is men?tioned in the first section of this invasion. However, given the antago?nistic history between the Xiu and Cocom lineages during the aban?donment of Uxmal, it is understandable why the Chumayel narratorwould want to downplay the cultural importance of Uxmal by relegat?ing it to a peripheral position within the creation story. For an over?view of Xiu-Cocom interaction, see Frans Blom, The Conquest of Yucatan(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936), 81-85.
49. Restall, Maya Conquistador, 144. The Franciscans took Gaspar AntonioChi away from his family at a young age and reared him in the monas?tic schools, teaching him to read and write in both Spanish and Latin.
By 1561 Chi was working closely with Landa, especially as an inter?
preter and court scribe during the Mani auto-da-fe of 1562 and, follow?
ing Landa's removal from the province, for the bishop of Yucatan,Friar Francisco de Toral. Undoubtedly, Chi provided much of the eth?
nographic material for Landa's Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan and wasthe author of many submissions to Philip II's Relaciones geogr?ficas
project.50. In her discussion of central Mexican maps, Dana Leibsohn has argued
that the substitution of indigenous toponyms by generic church glyphsperforms an "ideological function" in that the newly adopted toponym"indexes the Christianization of conquered lands." Leibsohn, "Colonyand Cartography: Shifting Signs on Indigenous Maps of New Spain," in
Reframing the enaissance, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1995), 273.
51. Walter D. Mignolo, "Colonial Situations, Geographical Discourses andTerritorial Representations: Toward a Diatopical Understanding of Co?lonial Semiosis," Dispositio 14 (1991): 162.
52. Richard Kagan, Urban Images of theHispanic World, 1493-1793 (New Ha?ven: Yale University Press, 2000), 16.
53. Ibid.
54. As previously mentioned, Stephens's transcription of The Mani Land
Treaty Map significantly altered Uxmal's toponym, transforming it froman aerial view to an elevation.
55. In his examination of early colonial land bills of sale and bequests,Matthew Restall has found that as a means to chart property holdings,
indigenous people processed around the territory's boundary in a for?mulaic manner, and in 98 percent of the cases they respected a squareor rounded route that circumambulated the space. As groups walkedthe boundaries, they named the cardinal directions, prompting a visual
image, a mental map that corresponds to the preconquest quincunxpattern. Restall thus surmises that this formulaic pattern suggests a ritu?alized event that recollects the original settlement of the land. See Re?stall, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550-1850 (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1997), 194-200.
56. For a fuller discussion of itinerary maps and their experiential visual
language, see Ricardo Padron, "Mapping Plus Ultra: Cartography,Space, and Hispanic Modernity," Representations 79 (2002): 36-42.
57. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan, 186-87. For a transla?tion of the entire text, see 185-90.
58. The extant Map of Sotuta is likely a transcription of a document createdin 1545 at the bequest of Nachi Cocom, leader of the Cocom lineage,
when he ordered a survey of his territorial holdings. A period descrip?tion of this event is recorded in the "C?dice Perez," but, as in Pio
Perez's transcription of the Mani Land Treaty, he did not include a
rendering of the Sotuta map. However, the textual description of theevent appears to mirror the structure of the Mani Land Treaty process
whereby participants proceeded throughout peripheral towns and fi?
nally returned to settlements under the domain of the Cocom lineage.Although an examination of this event is outside the scope of the
present study, it appears that this indigenous examination of space also
replicated and mirrored localized understandings of cosmogenesis. Forthe textual account, see Juan Pio Perez, Codice Perez, trans. Gustavo
Vega Ibarra, ed. Ralph L. Roys (Merida, Mex.: Ediciones de la Liga deAccion Social, 1949), 358-64.
59. The extant Map ofAcanceh is a 1763 copy of the town's account of the1557 Mani Land Treaty. TheMap of Tabasco was created as a responseto Philip IFs geographic queries. In 1575, Philip II and his royal cos
mographer, Juan Lopez de Velasco, devised a fifty-point questionnairerequiring all colonial administrators of Spain's American territories tofurnish detailed information about local ecology, history, and culture.Three of these questions requested maps, specifically, a civic plan, acoastal map, and another describing offshore islands. However, given
the lack of Spanish and Creole settlers trained in modern cartography,few of the responses included maps, and most of those that did werecommissions from indigenous artists. The resulting documents provideinvaluable insight to scholars for the view they lend into the transfor?
mative and conflictual domain of intercultural encounters in the earlycolonial period. See Barbara E. Mundy, TheMapping of New Spain: In?
digenous Cartography and theMaps of the "Relaciones Geogr?ficas" (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1996).
60. Barbara E. Mundy has made a similar argument for the circular Nurem?
berg ap that accompanied Hern?n Cortes's "Second Letter" toCharles V. While the document clearly utilized European visual tropes,Mundy argues that it is based on an indigenous source, as its structur?
ing form and other iconographic elements actually "yield a glimpse ofthe ideological conception of the imperial capital" possible only by anative maker. For a fuller discussion, see Mundy, "Mapping the Aztec
Capital: The 1524 Nuremberg Map of Tenochtitlan, Its Sources and
Meanings," Imago Mundi 50 (1998): 11-33, at 13.
61. In addition to the round maps submitted as part of the Relaciones, an?other round map is also extant from Oaxaca, the Lienzo deficay?n. Fora discussion of the place signs used in this cartograph, see Mary Eliza?
beth Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico: Mixtec PlaceSigns and Maps (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), 55-60,66-67, 148-61.
62. For a fuller discussion of the circular maps from Oaxaca, see Mundy,TheMapping ofNew Spain, 112-17.